LeapComp - Sales Performance Management Blog

In this second part of the ActekSoft ACom3 Sales Performance Management solution review, I will focus on some of the concepts that make this solution a particularly good fit for insurance clients. The first part of this article is here.

Management of producer (payee) data
The insurance industry has very challenging requirements regarding producer (payee) data. ACom3 supports an unlimited number of direct and indirect hierarchies with no limits on the number of levels it contains (some of ActekSoft’s clients pay more than 20 levels). ACom3 also has an integrated license and compliance module which can easily manage logic for compliance violations.

Communication / Workflow
ACom3’s correspondence module can be setup to automatically send letters or emails on demand or based on conditions configured the system (for example in can send an e-mail when a license will expire in a certain number of days, or when a debit balance exceeds a certain dollar amount). The workflow module can be leveraged to facilitate and streamline internal and external communications.

Unearned Commissions
ACom3 provides built-in features to facilitate logic to handle unearned/future commissions such as annualized payout and advanced payment with automated charge backs for policy terminations that take place while there is still an unearned commission balance on the advance. ACom3 also has a reserve feature which holds back a portion of the advance payment to offset future chargebacks.

Scalability
Unlike many other industries, the insurance industry always requires computation at the transactional level and not at a summary level. Because of the volume of transactions and often complex hierarchies which can transform an originating transaction into an additional 10 or 20 transactions, efficient scalability is critical. ACom3 uses the concept of work units which can distribute processing across multiple servers and processors.

Insurance specific concepts in Formulas
Compensation formulas contain many insurance specific concepts such policy age and policy age/holder age calculations, a wide range of performance based tiering options, and the ability to tie advances and automated charge backs to calculations.

Strong Retroactive Capabilities
Retroactive processing is particularly important to the insurance industry and ACom3 supports in excess of 20 retroactive objects that allow the system to reverse and reprocess transactions for as many periods back required. Retroactivity is often required to resolve incorrect assignment of producers to a customer or policy, incorrect hierarchies, the use of an incorrect schedule, etc. ACom3 marks all transactions that need to be reprocessed in prior and current periods to ensure that tiered based payments are correct.

Security and Audits
Data confidentiality and security is highly regulated in the insurance industry. ACom3 was built with these requirements in mind and offers strong security and audit functionality, audit reporting, secure data transfers, and encryption out of the box.

Final Thoughts
Overall, I was impressed by the richness of ACom3. The size of the company could have been a concern for potential clients, but with Callidus now standing behind ActekSoft, this should no longer be a concern. The new challenge which ActekSoft will have to manage is to retain the same level of client-focus they have demonstrated in the past for their current and new customers.

While I found that ACom3 is not the ‘sexiest’ application, several improvements were recently made to its user interface with its release version 6.0. ACom3 provides several insurance specific features, and its focus on transactional processing makes it a solution worth considering for many projects.